Palestine
Palestine (,
Palestina,
Filastīn or
Falastīn) and
Land of Israel (
Eretz Yisrael) are two of many historical names for the region between the
Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the
Jordan River with various adjoining lands. Many different
definitions of the region have been used in the past three millennia.
|
9th century BCE: Land of Israel with Philistia in gray. |
The geographic areas called the
Land of Israel, the
Holy Land,
Canaan, and later Palestine, overlap and are often interchangeable in modern usage.
During the Bronze Age, the land approximating modern Israel and Lebanon was called the Land of Canaan. It fell under the control of Egyptian vassals. Thusly, the
Hebrew Bible calls Canaan a "son" of
Ham, connecting it with part of Africa (). (Later the northern area approximating Lebanon came to be known as
Phoenicia.)
During the Iron Age, the area approximating modern Israel was called the Land of Israel. It fell under the control of the
United Monarchy of the
twelve tribes of Israel. Afterward, this land subdivided into the southern
Kingdom of Judah and the northern
Kingdom of Israel.
The term "Palestine" derives from the word
Philistine, the name of a non-Semitic ethnic group, who inhabited a smaller area on the southern coast, called
Philistia, whose borders approximate the modern
Gaza Strip.
The earliest extant mention of the Philistines occurs in Egyptian texts which record a people called the
P-l-s-t or
P-r-s-t (conventionally
Peleset), one of the
Sea Peoples who invaded
Egypt in
Ramesses III's reign. The
Hebrew name
Peleshet (
Pəléshseth), usually translated as
Philistia in English, is used in the
Bible to denote their southern coastal region. The Assyrian emperor
Sargon II called it the
Palashtu in his Annals. The Philistines seem to have disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the
Assyrian period, however the name of their land remained. During the Persian Period, the Greek form
Palaistinêi (whence Latin
Palestina, whence English
Palestine) was first used in the
5th century BCE by
Herodotus who wrote of a "district of Syria, called
Palaistinêi". The boundaries of the area he referred to were not explicitly stated, but
Josephus used the name only for the smaller coastal area, Philistia.
Ptolemy also used the term. In
Latin,
Pliny mentions a region of Syria that was "formerly called
Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Later, the Romans renamed the entire Land of Israel as "Palestine" and annexed it as part of the province of Syria.
Main articles: History of Palestine, History of ancient Israel and Judah, History of Israel.Roman period
As a result of the
First Jewish-Roman War (
66–
73),
Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the
Second Temple, leaving only the
Western Wall. In
135, following the fall of a
Jewish revolt led by
Bar Kokhba in 132–135, the Roman emperor
Hadrian expelled most Jews from Judea, leaving large Jewish populations in Samaria and the Galilee. He also changed the name of the Roman province of Judea (Israel) to
Syria Palaestina named after the Philistines as an insult to the now conquered Jews. In what was considered a form of
psychological warfare, the Romans also tried to change the name of
Jerusalem to
Aelia Capitolina, but that had less staying power. Over time the name Syria Palaestina was shortened to Palaestina, which by then had become an administrative political unit within the
Roman Empire.
Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) period
In approximately 390, Palaestina was further organised into three units:
Palaestina Prima,
Secunda, and
Tertia (First, Second, and Third Palestine).
Palaestina Prima consisted of Judea,
Samaria, the coast, and
Peraea with the governor residing in
Caesarea.
Palaestina Secunda consisted of the
Galilee, the lower
Jezreel Valley, the regions east of Galilee, and the western part of the former
Decapolis with the seat of government at
Scythopolis.
Palaestina Tertia included the
Negev, southern
Jordan — once part of Arabia — and most of
Sinai with
Petra the usual residence of the governor. Palestina Tertia was also known as Palaestina Salutaris. This reorganization reduced Arabia to the northern Jordan east of Peraea. Byzantine administration of Palestine ended temporarily during the Persian occupation of 614–28, then permanently after the Arabs conquered the region beginning in 635.
Caliphate and later Arab rulers
 |
An 1890 map of Palestine as described by medieval Arab geographers, with the junds of northern Jordan and southern Filastin |
The new Arab rulers divided the province of
ash-Sham (Arabic for Greater
Syria) into five districts.
Jund Filastin (Arabic جند فلسطين, literally "the army or military district of Palestine") was a region extending from the Sinai to south of the plain of Acre. At times it reached down into the Sinai. Major towns included
Rafah, Caesarea, Gaza,
Jaffa,
Nablus,
Jericho, Ramla and Jerusalem. Initially Ludd (
Lydda) was the capital, but in 717 it was moved to the new city of ar-Ramlah (
Ramla). (The capital was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, when the organization into
Junds was already breaking down.)
Jund al-Urdunn (literally "Jordan") was a region to the north and east of Filastin. Major towns included Tiberias, Legio, Acre, Beisan and Tyre. The capital was at
Tiberias. Various political upheavals led to readjustments of the boundaries several times. After the 10th century, the division into
Junds began to break down and the Turkish invasions of the 1070s, followed by the first Crusade, completed that process. From the 11th to the 19th centuries we have instances that Filasṭin did not refer to the land of Palestine but to its by then defunct capital ar-Ramla.:
See also the Mideastweb map of "Palestine Under the Caliphs", showing Jund boundaries (external link).Crusader period
See the articles on the
Crusades and the
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Mamluk period
After Muslim control over Palestine was reestablished in the 12th and 13th centuries, the division into districts was reinstated, with boundaries that were frequently redrawn. 1263/Jul 1291 the country was part of the
Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
Around the end of the 13th century, Palestine comprised several of nine emirates of Syria, namely the "Kingdoms" of
Gaza (including Ascalon and Hebron),
Karak (including Jaffa and Legio),
Safad (including Safad, Acre, Sidon and Tyre) and parts of the Kingdom of
Damascus (sometimes extending as far south as Jerusalem).
By the middle of the 14th century, Syria had again been divided into five districts, of which
Filastin included Jerusalem (its capital), Ramla, Ascalon, Hebron and Nablus, while
Hauran included Tiberias (its capital).
Ottoman period
After the
Ottoman conquest, the name disappeared as the
official name of an administrative unit, as the Turks often called their (sub)provinces after the capital. Since its 1516 incorporation in the Ottoman Empire, it was part of the
vilayet (
province) of Damascus-Syria until 1660, next of the
vilayet of
Saida (seat in Lebanon), shortly interrupted by the 7 March 1799 - July 1799 French occupation of Jaffa, Haifa, and Caesarea. On 10 May 1832 it was one of the Turkish provinces annexed by
Muhammad Ali's shortly imperialistic, Egypt (remained nominally Ottoman), but in November 1840 direct Ottoman rule was restored.
Still the old name remained in popular and semi-official use. Many examples of its usage in the 16th and 17th centuries have survived.
[Gerber, 1998.] During the 19th century, the "Ottoman Government employed the term
Arz-i Filistin (the 'Land of Palestine') in official correspondence, meaning for all intents and purposes the area to the west of the River Jordan which became 'Palestine' under the British in 1922".
[Mandel, 1976, p. xx.] Amongst the educated Arab public,
Filastin was a common concept, referring either to the whole of Palestine or to the Jerusalem
sanjaq alone.
[Porath, 1974, pp. 8-9.]The Ottoman Sultan discouraged all large-scale immigration to Palestine, replying to a request by Rabbi
Joseph Nantonek for permission to settle Jews in 1876 that "almost all lands in Palestine were occupied, and that the autonomy sought by Nantonek was incompatible with the administrative principles of the state" and decrees against mass settlement were issued by the Ottoman government in 1884, 1887 and 1888.
[Karpat, 2002, p. 794.] Significant numbers of Jews began making
Aliyah to the Holy Land in 1882
[Rogan, 2002, p. 71.] to build collective farms and eventually established the new city of
Tel Aviv in 1909.
[Schlor, 1999, p. 11.] However, during 1891-1900 the total number of Jews in Palestine was never more than 60,000 people out of a total population of 500,000, which demonstrated that "the Ottoman policy of allowing individuals to immigrate and to settle, but prohibiting large groups from doing the same, was successful".
[Karpat, 2002, p. 799.] When Ottoman control came to an end, following
World War I, the number of Jews in Palestine had declined to 55,000.
[Porath, 1974, p. 17]The 19th and 20th centuries
In European usage up to
World War I, "Palestine" was used informally for a region that extended in the north-south direction typically from
Raphia (south-east of
Gaza) to the
Litani River (now in Lebanon). The western boundary was the sea, and the eastern boundary was the poorly-defined place where the Syrian desert began. In various European sources, the eastern boundary was placed anywhere from the Jordan River to slightly east of
Amman. The
Negev Desert was not included. [Biger]
Under the
Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, it was envisioned that most of Palestine, when freed by Ottoman control, would become an international zone not under direct French or British colonial control. Shortly thereafter, British foreign minister
Arthur Balfour issued the
Balfour Declaration of 1917, which laid plans for a Jewish homeland to be established in Palestine eventually.
The British-led
Egyptian Expeditionary Force, commanded by
Edmund Allenby, captured Jerusalem on
9 December, 1917 and occupied the whole of the Levant following the defeat of Turkish forces in Palestine at the
Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.
[Hughes, 1999, p. 17; p. 97.]British Mandate (1920-1948)
Formal use of the English word "Palestine" returned with the
British Mandate. During this period, the name "
Eretz Yisrael" (
Hebrew: ארץ ישראל) was also part of the official name of the territory.
|
A stamp from Palestine under the British Mandate |
In April 1920 the Allied Supreme Council (the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan) met at
Sanremo and formal decisions were taken on the allocation of mandate territories. The United Kingdom accepted a mandate for Palestine, but the boundaries of the mandate and the conditions under which it was to be held were not decided. The Zionist Organization's representative at Sanremo,
Chaim Weizmann, subsequently reported to his colleagues in London:
"There are still important details outstanding, such as the actual terms of the mandate and the question of the boundaries in Palestine. There is the delimitation of the boundary between French Syria and Palestine, which will constitute the northern frontier and the eastern line of demarcation, adjoining Arab Syria. The latter is not likely to be fixed until the Emir Feisal attends the Peace Conference, probably in Paris."
['Zionist Aspirations: Dr Weizmann on the Future of Palestine', The Times, Saturday, 8 May, 1920; p. 15.]In July 1920, the French drove
Faisal bin Husayn from
Damascus ending his already negligible control over the region of Transjordan, where local chiefs traditionally resisted any central authority. The sheikhs, who had earlier pledged their loyalty to the Sharif, asked the British to undertake the region's administration.
Herbert Samuel asked for the extension of the Palestine government's authority to Transjordan, but at meetings in Cairo and Jerusalem between
Winston Churchill and
Emir Abdullah in March 1921 it was agreed that Abdullah would administer the territory (initially for six months only) on behalf of the Palestine administration. In the summer of 1921 Transjordan was included within the Mandate, but excluded from the provisions for a
Jewish National Home.
[Gelber, 1997, pp. 6-15.] On
24 July, 1922 the League of Nations approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan. On
16 September the League formally approved a memorandum from
Lord Balfour confirming the exemption of Transjordan from the clauses of the mandate concerning the creation of a Jewish national home and from the mandate's responsibility to
facilitate Jewish immigration and land settlement.
[Sicker, 1999, p. 164.] In reality, the British prevented Jews from settling in Transjordan, while Arabs could freely settle in Palestine. (See
Entry of Jews into Transjordan).
The award of the mandates was delayed as a result of the United States' suspicions regarding Britain's colonial ambitions and similar reservations held by Italy about France's intentions. France in turn refused to reach a settlement over Palestine until its own mandate in Syria became final. According to Louis,
Together with the American protests against the issuance of mandates these triangular quarrels between the Italians, French, and British explain why the A mandates did not come into force until nearly four years after the signing of the
Peace Treaty.... The British documents clearly reveal that Balfour's patient and skilful diplomacy contributed greatly to the final issuance of the A mandates for Syria and Palestine on
September 29, 1923.
[Louis, 1969, p. 90.]Even before the Mandate came into legal effect in 1923 (
text), British terminology frequently used '"Palestine" for the part west of the Jordan River and "Trans-Jordan" (or
Transjordania) for the part east of the Jordan River
[Ingrams, 1972. ][League of Nations (1921). An Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine] From about 1924 onwards, this terminology was applied consistently during the Mandate period and it is difficult to find any official documents that use any name other than "Palestine and Trans-Jordan" when referring to the whole area of the Mandate. Nevertheless, the claim that "Palestine" was once considered to include lands on the east side of the Jordan River continues even today to have significance in political discourse (see
History of Palestine,
History of Jordan).
In the years following
World War II, Britain's position in Palestine gradually worsened. This was caused by a combination of factors, including:
* The situation in Palestine itself rapidly deteriorated, due to the incessant attacks by
Irgun and
Lehi on British officials, armed forces, and strategic installations. This caused severe damage to British morale and prestige, as well as increasing opposition to the mandate in Britain itself, public opinion demanding to "bring the boys home".
[Colonel Archer-Cust, Chief Secretary of the British Government in Palestine, said in a lecture to the Royal Empire Society that "The hanging of the two British Sergeants [an Irgun retaliation to British executions] did more than anything to get us out [of Palestine]".]
(The United Empire Journal, November-December 1949, taken from The Revolt, by Menachem Begin) * World public opinion turned against Britain as a result of the British policy of preventing the Jewish
Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine, sending them instead to refugee camps in
Cyprus, or even back to
Germany, as in the case of
Exodus 1947.
* The costs of maintaining an army of over 100,000 men in Palestine weighed heavily on a British economy suffering from post-war depression, and was another cause for British public opinion to demand an end to the Mandate.
Finally in early 1947 the British Government announced their desire to terminate the Mandate, and passed the responsibility over Palestine to the
United Nations.
UN Partition
 |
The UN Partition Plan |
On
29 November 1947, the
United Nations General Assembly passed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181), a plan to resolve the
Arab-Jewish conflict by partitioning the territory into separate and
Arab states, with the Greater
Jerusalem area (encompassing
Bethlehem) coming under international control. Jewish leaders (including the
Jewish Agency), accepted the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it. Neighboring Arab and Muslim states also rejected the partition plan. As armed skirmishes between Arab and Jewish paramilitary forces in Palestine continued, the British mandate ended on
May 15,
1948, the establishment of the
State of Israel having been proclaimed the day before (see
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel). The neighboring Arab states immediately attacked Israel following its declaration of independence, and the
1948 Arab-Israeli War ensued. Consequently, the partition plan was never implemented.
Current status
 |
West Bank |
 |
Gaza Strip |
Following the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, the
1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab states eliminated Palestine as a distinct territory. It was divided between Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
In addition to the UN-partitioned area, Israel captured 26% of the Mandate territory west of the Jordan river. Jordan captured and annexed about 21% of the Mandate territory. Jerusalem was divided, with Jordan taking the eastern parts, including the old city, and Israel taking the western parts. The
Gaza Strip was captured by
Egypt.
For a description of the massive population movements, Arab and Jewish, at the time of the 1948 war and over the following decades, see
Palestinian exodus and
Jewish exodus from Arab lands.
From the 1960s onward, the term "Palestine" was regularly used in political contexts. Various declarations, such as the 1988 proclamation of a
State of Palestine by the
PLO referred to a country called Palestine, defining its borders with differing degrees of clarity, including the annexation of the whole of the State of Israel. Most recently, the Palestine draft constitution refers to borders based on the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to the 1967
Six-Day War. This so-called
Green Line follows the
1949 armistice line; the permanent borders are yet to be negotiated. Furthermore, since 1994, there has been a
Palestinian Authority controlling varying portions of historic Palestine.
Demographics during the Ottoman period
In 1900, Palestine (according to
Ottoman statistics) had a population of about 600,000 of which 94% were
Arabs.
[McCarthy, 1990.]The Question of Arab Immigration to Palestine
Whether there was significant Arab immigration into Palestine after the beginning of Jewish settlement there has been a matter of some controversy. Demographer
Uziel Schmelz, in his analysis of Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron
kazas, found that most Ottoman citizens living in these areas, comprising about one quarter of the population of Palestine, were living at the place where they were born. Specifically, of Muslims, 93.1% were born in their current locality of residence, 5.2% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 1.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Christians, 93.4% were born in their current locality, 3.0% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 3.6% were born outside Palestine. Of Jews (excluding the large fraction who were not Ottoman citizens), 59.0% were born in their current locality, 1.9% were born elsewhere in Palestine, and 39.0% were born outside Palestine.
[Schmelz, 1990, pp. 15-67.]American economist Gottheil considers that there was significant Arab immigration:
... there is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses.
The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography"or other demographic analyses based on very crude data"acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.
[Gottheil, 2003.]Israeli historian
Yehoshua Porath believes that the notion of "large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries" is a myth "proposed by Zionist writers". He writes:
As all the research by historians and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no "natural" increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth...
No one would doubt that some migrant workers came to Palestine from Syria and Trans-Jordan and remained there. But one has to add to this that there were migrations in the opposite direction as well. For example, a tradition developed in Hebron to go to study and work in Cairo, with the result that a permanent community of Hebronites had been living in Cairo since the fifteenth century. Trans-Jordan exported unskilled casual labor to Palestine; but before 1948 its civil service attracted a good many educated Palestinian Arabs who did not find work in Palestine itself. Demographically speaking, however, neither movement of population was significant in comparison to the decisive factor of natural increase.
[Porath, Y. (1986). Mrs. Peters's Palestine. New York Review of Books. 16 January, 32(21 & 22).]By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were
Arabs, and 32% were
Jews (
UNSCOP report, including
bedouin).
*Avneri, Arieh (1984), The Claim of Dispossession, Tel Aviv: Hidekel Press
*Bachi, Roberto (1974), The Population of Israel, Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University
*Biger, Gideon (1981). Where was Palestine? Pre-World War I perception,
AREA (Journal of the Institute of British Geographers) Vol 13, No. 2, pp. 153-160.
*Doumani, Beshara (1995).
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900. UC Press. ISBN 0520203704
*Gelber, Yoav (1997).
Jewish-Transjordanian Relations 1921-48: Alliance of Bars Sinister. London: Routledge. ISBN 071464675X
*Gerber, Haim (1998). "Palestine" and other territorial concepts in the 17th century,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 30, pp. 563-572.
*Gottheil, Fred M. (2003)
The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931,
Middle East Quarterly, X(1).
*Hughes, Mark (1999).
Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714649201
*Ingrams, Doreen (1972).
Palestine Papers 1917-1922. London: John Murray. ISBN 0807606480
*
Khalidid, Rashid (1997).
Palestinian Identity. The Construction of Modern National Consciousness.
Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231105150
*Karpat, Kemal H. (2002).
Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History. Brill. ISBN 9004121013
*Kimmerling, Baruch and Migdal, Joel S. (1994).
Palestinians: The Making of a People, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674652231
*Le Strange, Guy (1965).
Palestine under the Moslems (Originally published in 1890; reprinted by Khayats) ISBN 0404562884
*J.P. Loftus (1948), Features of the demography of Palestine, Population Studies, Vol 2
*Louis, Wm. Roger (1969). The United Kingdom and the Beginning of the Mandates System, 1919-1922.
International Organization, 23(1), pp. 73-96.
*McCarthy, Justin (1990).
The Population of Palestine. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231071108.
*Mandel, Neville J. (1976).
The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. University of California Press. ISBN 0520024664
*
Maniscalco, Fabio. (2005).
Protection, conservation and valorisation of Palestinian Cultural Patrimony Massa Publisher. ISBN 8887835624.
*Metzer, Jacob (1988), The divided economy of Mandatory Palestine, Cambridge University Press
*Porath, Yehoshua (1974).
The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0714629391
*Rogan, Eugene L. (2002).
Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521892236.
*Schlor, Joachim (1999).
Tel Aviv: From Dream to City. Reaktion Books. ISBN 1861890338
*Shahin, Mariam (2005).
Palestine: A Guide, Interlink Books. ISBN 156656557X
*Schmelz, Uziel O. (1990) Population characteristics of Jerusalem and Hebron regions according to Ottoman Census of 1905, in Gar G. Gilbar, (ed.),
Ottoman Palestine: 1800-1914. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004077855
*Sicker, Martin (1999).
Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. Praeger/Greenwood. ISBN 0275966399
*
UNSCOP Report to the General Assembly*Westermann,
Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte. ISBN 3075095206
*
Land of Israel covers roughly the same region, with a different focus
*
State of Israel*
State of Palestine*
Israeli-Palestinian conflict*
Arab-Israeli conflict*
Greater Israel*
Greater Syria*The Hope Simpson Report (London, 1930) [
1]
*Palestine Royal Commission Report (the Peel Report) (London, 1937) [
2]
*Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1928) [
3]
*Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1929) [
4]
*Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1934) [
5]
*Report to the Council of the League of Nations (1935) [
6]
*
www.mideastweb.org - A website with a wealth of statistics regarding population in Palestine*
Coins and Banknotes of Palestine under the British Mandate*
WorldStatesmen- mainly under IsraelMaps
*
Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916*
1947 UN Partition Plan*
1949 Armisitice Lines*
Israel After 1949 Armistice Agreements
